Mashable:Twitter Engineer Builds Tool for Event Backchannels – “A new tool makes Twitter a better backchannel for events and panels. Bill Couch, a software engineer at Twitter, demoed the new tool at SXSW on Friday during the “Design from the Gut” panel. Panels often use a Twitter hashtag as a way to accept audience-submitted questions. The problem, however, is that these tweets from panel attendees show up in all of their followers feeds — whether or not those followers care about the panel.”

Mashable: 10 Innovative Uses of Facebook Timeline for Brands – “Several companies have already hopped on the Timeline bandwagon — some are making cool use of the cover photos — but is that really all there is to Timeline? Of course not. There are tons of cool ways to make use of Timeline’s new features, whether you’re a large business or small.”

HowTo.gov:So Many Devices, So Many Opportunities– We are juggling our devices more than ever, and posting on them simultaneously! Cross-platform consumption is increasing rapidly as people use different devices such as smartphones, tablets and laptops to consume content, according to the GlobalWebIndex. To develop strategies that cross platforms in government:Think content types, not media and budget for content

HowTo.gov: Meet More Execs with Internal Social Networks – Do you know what your coworkers are doing? If your organization uses enterprise social networking, you do. ESN’s are internal tools riffing off Twitter and Facebook-type platforms. The instant messaging, photo and document sharing and other “put it on the wall” activities increase collaboration among employees across the organization, according to the Altimeter Group study “Making the Business Case for Enterprise Social Networking.”

HowTo.gov: Create Custom Social Streams with Storify – Through all the muddled mass sharing in social media, you can actually decide what is most importantand share the highlights with your audience. Here’s how: Government organizations are using Storify to save the best of their social media content and to emphasize key content. Storify’s curation tool enables you to pull tweets, video or other types of user-generated content into a social story stream.

Mashable:Gowalla Is Officially Shut Down – “Three months after its acquisition by Facebook, Gowalla has officially shut down. Gowalla was a location-based check-in service that directly rivaled foursquare. Both Gowalla and foursquare launched at SXSW in 2009. Three years later during SXSW 2012, the plug has officially been pulled on Gowalla’s service.”

Posterous: Posterous is Joining the Flock at Twitter – “Big news: Posterous has been acquired by Twitter! The opportunities in front of Twitter are exciting, and we couldn’t be happier about bringing our team’s expertise to a product that reaches hundreds of millions of users around the globe. Plus, the people at Twitter are genuinely nice folks who share our vision for making sharing simpler.”

Mashable: How to Defeat the Social Media Skeptics in Your Company – “For those trying to get a social media campaign going in their company, they’ll often have to deal with naysayers that question the value. Former Kodak CMO Jeff Hayzlett says dealing with the non-believer is all part of “running the gauntlet.” He believes it so strongly that he even wrote a book with the same title that promises to teach people how to push forward with their social media dreams.”

Mashable: AIM: AOL Instant Messenger Isn’t Dead … Yet – “AOL Instant Messenger, better known as AIM, is alive and well — for now, at least. Despite laying off nearly all its AIM developers Tuesday, AOL says it has no plans to kill off the 15-year old instant messaging service.”

techPresident: The White House’s First 40 Days – “Brook Colangelo, the Chief Information Officer of the Executive Office of the President, realized shortly after President Obama’s inauguration that the current IT assets “were in pretty bad shape.” ComputerWorld reports on Colangelo’s realization that early in his tenure at the White House that over 82% of “White House’s technology had reached the end of life.” Among a myriad of other tech problems, within the first 40 days the administration’s email was down 23% of the time. In the article, Colangelo describes a number of particularly difficult events during his tenure as CIO, but many ended with positive outcomes that would help to alleviate future issues.”

Mashable: How to Track Your Website’s Content on Pinterest – “Pinterest is now one of the most efficient traffic sources, in some cases even surpassing networks like Twitter. Naturally, a lot of social media marketers are embracing Pinterest to increase social media reach and to drive traffic to their sites. In order to track what is being pinned from your site, and to engage with those pins further, try funneling that Pinterest content into a handy RSS feed.”

Wall Street Journal: Google Gives Search a Refresh — Google Inc. is giving its tried-and-true Web-search formula a makeover as it tries to fix the shortcomings of today’s technology and maintain its dominant market share. — Over the next few months, Google’s search engine will begin spitting out more than a list of blue Web links.

Brian Solis: Social media is about social science not technology – Unfortunately in new media, we tend to put technology ahead of people. Think about your current social media, mobile, or web strategy for a moment. Do you even know who you’re trying to reach? Do you know what customers or stakeholders expect or the challenges they face? Are you familiar with how they connect and communicate and why? Lastly, do you understand the journey they take to make decisions?

Mashable: YouTube ‘Suggested Videos’ Now Favor Longest-Watched – “YouTube has altered its suggested videos algorithm to favor videos that are watched for the longest periods of time. Previously, suggested videos — which appear as related videos on watch pages, or recommended videos elsewhere on youtube.com — were served up based on the number of people who clicked on those videos. Now, YouTube videos that trigger the longest viewing times will be prioritized.”

AllThings D:Exclusive: Kevin Rose Will Join Google – “Digg founder Kevin Rose has been hired by Google, according to sources close to the situation. Rose’s mobile app incubator Milk yesterday announced it was shutting down its only product, Oink.”

Mashable: Pinterest’s First Investor Explains the Secret to the Startup’s Success – ““I was Pinterest’s first investor.” That’s a sentence I bet you wish you could say. Here at SXSW, I find myself sitting opposite angel investor Brian Cohen who happily owns that distinction. In other words, he found, as he calls them, a couple of young guys from NYU (Ben Silbermann and Evan Sharp) at a business plan competition where angel investors “forage for new opportunities.” The rest is startup legend.”

techPresident: What Does “Open Government” Even Mean Anymore? – “In a paper published earlier this week, Harlan Yu and David G. Robinson assert that the phrase “open government,” which used to mean government transparency — as in, revealing the internal functions and decision-making of government — has come to also mean increasing access to data that may not have anything to do at all with transparency:”

Mashable: How To Hire a Great Developer [FLOW CHART] – “If you’re just foraying into the land of entrepreneurship, you may wonder where the to even start looking for such a person. And even if you do find a developer, how will you know the extent of his talent and whether he’s a good fit for you?”

techPresident: Slashdot Founder Rob Malda Joins Washington Post – “Rob Malda — known to millions as CmdrTaco, the founder and for 14 years chief cat-herder of the tech community and news aggregation site Slashdot — has taken a job at the Washington Post’s “WaPo Labs,” he announced today:”

Mashable: 10 Strategies for Non-Profits on Pinterest – “Here are 10 tips from non-profits that are currently using Pinterest. With these suggestions in your back pocket, your own organization can further (or even reinvent) its image in no time.”

Fast Company: Bloomberg Expanding Tech Coverage — The financial news giant is launching a tech vertical, several new blogs, and creating original video content. — The crowded tech news scene will become even more crowded this week—Bloomberg has announced a major overhaul of their tech coverage.

Mashable: How to Take Your PR Pitches to the Next Level – “If you work in PR, here are some innovative ways to improve your pitches and hopefully, help you nab some buzz. Of course, the best way to generate buzz is to pair an excellent, tailored pitch with a stellar product.”

Mashable: How the U.S. Military Shares Its Rich History With Facebook Timeline – “The Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines and Coast Guard have spent weeks preparing their individual Facebook Pages for the switch over to Timeline. Each branch has filled its Page with centuries worth of history, photos and interesting facts.The Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines and Coast Guard have spent weeks preparing their individual Facebook Pages for the switch over to Timeline. Each branch has filled its Page with centuries worth of history, photos and interesting facts.”

Mashable: U.S. Offers Food Safety Alerts on Twitter, State by State [VIDEO] – “The next time the U.S. government issues a food safety alert, you might hear about it straight from the horse’s mouth — on Twitter. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection serviced just launched Twitter accounts for specific states that can share news of recalls on poultry, meat and other food products for those specific regions.”

Amex OpenForum: Connecting You to the People You Should Know – “Shortly after its beta launch, Sumazi was chosen as a finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield, where it won the Omidyar Network award for the startup “Most Likely to Change the World.” “We got an awesome reaction and our first angel investor, Christina Brodbeck, was on the founding team at YouTube,” says Kazi.”

Mashable: 5 Huge Digital Marketing Trends You Can’t Afford to Ignore – “I don’t pretend to know the future. But the decisions and products of Apple, Amazon and other innovators will affect how we live in the years to come. As we anticipate our connected, Minority Report-style future, here are five big marketing ideas to embrace now to get ahead of the curve.”

techPresident: A Political Geek’s Guide To South by Southwest – “Many of the movers and shakers who are changing the business of governing will speak at SXSW this year. And there’ll be other intriguing panels on the origins of Anonymous, what it was like to live-tweet Osama Bin Laden’s death, how 21st century tools are undermining traditional forms of power, and how “slactivism” can be turned into “activism,” among other things. Here’s a political geek’s guide to SXSW.”

Mashable: 10 Google Search Tricks You Might Not Know – “To improve your search experience, utilize this list of features to help refine what you’re looking for. We’ve collected 10 quick Google tricks that you might’ve not known existed.”

techPresident: Issa’s Brain: What the Congressman Said During a Reddit Q&A – Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has been answering questions on Reddit today, particularly in his capacity as a member of the House Judiciary Committee where he has been outspoken against SOPA, PIPA and ACTA. In his introduction to the community, he called himself an “Internet defender and techie.” Which led nearly immediately to questions about his support of the Research Works Act. Here’s a look at what Issa said during his visit to Reddit.

Govloop: WordPress for Government – A Problem of Perception – “Over the past several years WordPress’s market share has enjoyed explosive growth across virtually every industry. Today, it powers nearly a quarter of new sites, and is the CMS of choice for more than two thirds of the top-million sites on the web making it the world’s most popular publishing platform by a long shot. Yet one group of seemingly ideal users has been slow to take the former blogging platform seriously: .Govs.”

Mashable: New Site Helps You Control Google Search Results for Your Name – “Potential employers, clients and dates are all Googling your name. BrandYourself, a new website launching Thursday, helps make sure they find what you want them to. The website guides you in search optimizing the links you want to push up in Google results for your name.”

CMO.com: 8 Valuable Approaches To Optimizing Your Tablet Strategy – “Here’s why: Consumer engagement is comprised of an interconnected series of interactions across devices and channels. Your customers expect you to recognize them, show them products and services for which they have an affinity, and allow them to have a continuous shopping experience regardless of whether they are on their smartphones, laptops, or tablets. Following are eight ways to optimize your tablet strategy:”

Mashable: LinkedIn Announces Women-Only ‘DevelopHer’ Hackday – “Scheduled for June 30 and July 1 in Mountain View, Calif., LinkedIn’s 24-hour event is open to students, enthusiasts and professionals. The company has created a DevelopHer Hackday LinkedIn Group where people can pitch ideas to other participants and build groups for the contest.”

Mashable: 5 Social Media Campaigns Rocking International Women’s Day – “We’ve rounded up some of the dynamic campaigns happening online, with the hopes of empowering women all over the world. Read about these five campaigns and tell us what you think of their efforts. Let us know in the comments if we missed any cool social efforts.”

Forbes: Convergence Is The Future Of Marketing – “Fragmentation is the new norm. Systems of the past aren’t the systems of the future. While the new thing is social media, you can’t breakout and beat your competition simply by focusing on Facebook and Twitter. Social is certainly one important part. The edge, however, is the complete opposite of the traditional advertising industry.”

Fast Company: How To Market To Consumers With Social-Media ADD – “The most universal factor in marketing today is that consumers are busier than ever and their attention more taxed. While Esther Dyson points out that attention is not truly fungible, it serves as an outstanding macro indicator of today’s changes in consumer behavior. And any imbalance of this magnitude invariably results in a correction.”

Nielson Wire: Buzz in the Blogosphere: Millions More Bloggers and Blog Readers – “Blogs are sometimes overlooked as a significant source of online buzz in comparison to social networking sites, yet consumer interest in blogs keeps growing. By the end of 2011, NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company, tracked over 181 million blogs around the world, up from 36 million only five years earlier in 2006.”

Wall Street Journal: Financing to Value Instagram at $500 Million – “Instagram is poised to raise a new round of financing that will value the popular photo-sharing application at as much as $500 million, people familiar with the matter said, despite some skepticism that the fast-growing company will find a way to make money. The potential new valuation—roughly 20 times what the fast-growing company was worth around a year ago—highlights the promise and pitfalls of technology start-ups that have built their business around users of mobile devices, such as Apple Inc.’s iPhone.”